In the present-day construction of building foundation walls, it is becoming a practice to employ hollow cement or cinder building blocks in all courses of the wall including the top course for the sake of economy and standardization. Heretofore, and to some extent at the present time, solid blocks were required in the top course of the foundation wall for added strength, to block termites and for other reasons.
Where hollow building blocks are used for the top course immediately below the wooden cap plate on which the framing is built, it has become a rather standard practice to fill up the vertical core openings of the blocks in all but the topmost course which are aligned with the cap plate anchor bolts with various trash from the job site, including paper bags, scraps of lumber and other material. This trash then forms a support bed for mortar placed in aligned core openings of the top course of blocks at regular intervals along the foundation wall to embed the anchor bolts which securely tie the wooden cap plate to the wall.
There are several disadvantages with the use of trash as a filler for the block passages. One disadvantage is that much of the trash is cellulosic in nature and thus invites termites. Furthermore, the trash is never solidly packed to an even level in the block passages and can either allow much mortar to fall into passages in lower courses of blocks, causing an economic loss, or to obstruct partially the placement of sufficient mortar in the selected passages of top course blocks to embed the cap plate anchor bolts.
The present invention completely overcomes these and other drawbacks of the prior art practices while at the same time providing a convenient and reliable visual indicator to enable the mason to select the proper openings of the top course building blocks for the placement of the anchoring mortar in the minimum time. The invention therefore constitutes a labor saving device, and the time saved is considerable in a large wall.
The properly placed mortar stop or screen functions to insolate the anchor bolt mortar from the block passages below the topmost course and thus prevents the loss of mortar into these passages. It assures a proper and complete filling of the selected passages in the top course only to firmly embed the anchor bolts, to strengthen the top course of blocks, and, most importantly, to assure a uniform level for the anchor bolts throughout the entire wall undergoing construction.
Other features and advantages of the invention will be explained in the course of the following detailed description.